Schmid wrote in part of his article about a professor from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who needed 11 years to obtain a patent on his revolutionary invention.\u00a0 The sad tale is told like this:<\/p>\n
Davida’s application, for secure ways to store personal biometric information on a smart card, was ahead of his time, said his patent attorney, Stephen Lesavich. He filed his patent application in 1999.<\/p>\n
But Davida may have missed his best opportunities. Sometime after 2003, while the application was still pending, the Patent Office lost his application file…<\/p>\n
Davida’s patent (No. 7,711,152) finally was issued in May – in the midst of a slow economy, and long after the 2001 terrorist attacks had made biometric data storage a hot technology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Schmid would explain that Davida’s patent application was lost sometime after 2003 and found sometime in 2008.\u00a0 For five years the application did not progress because it was lost.\u00a0 As inexcusable as that is, and as likely as some will be to focus only on that unfortunate fact, let’s not miss the most pressing point.\u00a0 The real question is why wasn’t this application allowed before it was ever lost?\u00a0 It had been pending nearly 4 years prior to being lost, and then after it was found it still took nearly 3 more years to issue?<\/p>\n
How many jobs were lost as a result of unacceptably slow processing by the Patent Office in the Davida case?\u00a0 What could have become of this exciting technology in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks?\u00a0 How many jobs will never be created because industry has moved on?\u00a0 If this happened here how many other times has a similar tale gone untold?<\/p>\n
Talk about lost opportunities.\u00a0 The Davida story replayed thousands of times, as it has been, explains why the United States has seen anemic job growth out of the Great Recession.\u00a0 It is wholly unacceptable by any definition.\u00a0 We are supposed to see a rebound from a deep recession, but innovation is not being fostered to allow for that.\u00a0 Things can and should be better.<\/p>\n
The current leadership of the Patent Office is doing better, much better, but Director Kappos is Captain of a sinking ship thanks to Congressional inaction and the inability of the Patent Office to reinvest in itself as an ongoing, growing and cutting-edge enterprise.<\/p>\n
The Innovation Alliance conference will hopefully generate new discussions about and direct appropriate attention to the critical role patents and the USPTO play in innovation and job creation in the United States.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, how well the conference succeeds will not only be decided by those who attend and discuss the topic, but rather it will depend upon the action that comes from the conference.\u00a0 Whether you can attend or not it is time to realize that everyone in the industry has a vested interest in Congress paying attention.<\/p>\n
With the Courts poised to continue to erode the value of a patent Congress will all but certainly need to act at some point in 2011 in order to sustain the value of a patent and allow intellectual property based start-ups flourish and reach their full employment potential.\u00a0 With so many new faces in Washington, DC, now is the time to get the message out.\u00a0 We must all be engaged.<\/p>\n
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n
\u2021 “New” being defined as elected in November 2010.\u00a0 There are 13 Senators new to the 112th Congress, with Senators Manchin, Kirk and Coons elected in November 2010 and sworn in immediately to fulfill existing terms.<\/p>\n
CORRECTION: <\/strong>Updated 1\/19\/2011 at 11:02 am.\u00a0 The original version (paragraph 3) incorrectly reported that the Newseum is affiliated with the Smithsonian.\u00a0 The Newseum is a 250,000-square-foot museum of news largely funded by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press and free speech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Innovation and entrepreneurship are central pillars of America\u2019s economic strength and critical vehicles for job creation. Reporter John Schmid of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote an article that was published on Sunday, January 16, 2011, aptly depicting the problems facing would-be job creators. Schmid wrote in part of his article about a professor from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who needed 11 years to obtain a patent on his revolutionary invention. How many jobs were lost as a result of unacceptably slow processing by the Patent Office?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19234,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[228,3],"tags":[8753,2716,8735,2765,1606,40,34,392,8748,8727],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14435"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}